of Judaea, and chiefly the Princes of Armenia and Cappadocia, who fell in the wars which Cyaxeres made in reducing those countries after the taking of Nineveh. Elam or Persia was conquered by the Medes, and Susiana by the Babylonians, after the ninth, and before the nineteenth year of Nebuchadnezzar:  and therefore we cannot err much if we place these conquests in the twelfth or fourteenth year of Nebuchadnezzar:  in the nineteenth, twentieth, and one and twentieth year of this King, he invaded and [412] conquered Judaea, Moab, Ammon, Edom, the Philistims and Zidon; and [413] the next year he besieged Tyre, and after a siege of thirteen years he took it, in the 35th year of his Reign; and then he [414] invaded and conquered Egypt, Ethiopia and Libya; and about eighteen or twenty years after the death of this King, Darius the Mede conquered the Kingdom of Sardes; and after five or six years more he invaded and conquered the Empire of Babylon:  and thereby finished the work of propagating the Medo-Persian Monarchy over all Asia, as AEschylus represents.

Now this is that Darius who coined a great number of pieces of pure gold called Darics, or Stateres Darici: for Suidas, Harpocration, and the Scholiast of Aristophanes> [415] tell us, that these were coined not by the father of Xerxes, but by an earlier Darius, by Darius the first, by the first King of the Medes and Persians who coined gold money.  They were stamped on one side with the effigies of an Archer, who was crowned with a spiked crown, had a bow in his left hand, and an arrow in his right, and was cloathed with a long robe; I have seen one of them in gold, and another in silver:  they were of the same weight and value with the Attic Stater or piece of gold money weighing two Attic drachms. Darius seems to have learnt the art and use of money from the conquered Kingdom of the Lydians, and to have recoined their gold:  for the Medes, before they conquered the Lydians, had no money. Herodotus [416] tells us, that when Croesus was preparing to invade Cyrus, a certain Lydian_ called Sandanis advised him, that he was preparing an expedition against a nation who were cloathed with leathern breeches, who eat not such victuals as they would, but such as their barren country afforded; who drank no wine, but water only, who eat no figs nor other good meat, who had nothing to lose, but might get much from the Lydians_:  for the Persians__, saith Herodotus, before they conquered the Lydians_, had nothing rich or valuable_:  and [417] Isaiah tells us, that the Medes_ regarded not silver, nor delighted in gold_; but the